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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Father tipped police to terrorist suspects

All five Americans are from D.C. area

Saeed Shah McClatchy

SARGODHA, Pakistan – Pakistani police arrested five American Muslims this week on suspicion of planning terrorist actions after Khalid Farooq, the father of one of them, turned them in, alarmed that they were determined to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials and friends of the family said Friday.

FBI agents and U.S. Embassy officials were questioning the five, ages 18 to 24 and all from Washington, D.C., suburbs, in the central Pakistani town of Sargodha.

The five had an Internet-powered interest in jihad, or holy war, and had e-mail contact with a mysterious Pakistani militant, the police said. The men’s planning appeared amateurish, however. Although police in Sargodha played up the Americans’ alleged links to al-Qaida and suggested they were involved in a major terrorist plot, the absence of radical connections may have thwarted their purported ambitions.

Police said that after searching in vain for a radical group that would accept them, the five ended up in Sargodha, where Umar Farooq, Khalid Farooq’s son, has family links. According to the police, their Pakistani e-mail contact told them to proceed to North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal area bordering Afghanistan.

The case has fueled fears about American Muslims, especially those of Pakistani origin, being drawn to militancy in Pakistan.

“They were ordinary guests, not terrorists,” a woman who refused to identify herself shouted through the closed door to the compound of the Farooq home in Sargodha. “A big injustice has been done with us.”

Police said they found extremist material on the men’s laptops and iPod nanos with jihadist speeches.

The five were arrested here Wednesday in a midmorning raid. U.S. intelligence had tipped their Pakistani counterparts about the men, whom their families reported missing in late November. It was only after Khalid Farooq, 55, contacted police that they moved in, however. Police said they also had detained Khalid Farooq as a precautionary measure.

“If we had got there even 20 minutes later, they might have gone, and then they would have been very difficult to track,” said Abbas Majeed Marwat, a senior police official who had interviewed some of the men. “Khalid Farooq informed the police about the designs of his son and his friends.”

The older Farooq, a U.S. national, feared that if his son made it to Afghanistan, he probably would never return, police said.

Khalid Farooq “used all modes to persuade them first (to stop). He used a harsh tone, he used a loving tone, he even locked them in the house,” Marwat said.